Hack Like a Pro
Hack Like a Pro: How to Hack the Shellshock Vulnerability
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! Every so often, a MAJOR vulnerability appears that makes millions of systems vulnerable to attack. The most recent, named Shellshock, basically leaves every Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX system on the planet vulnerable. As nearly two-thirds of all web servers on planet Earth run one of these operating systems (primarily Linux), that's a whole lot of systems out there waiting to be harvested.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Compile a New Hacking Tool in Kali
Welcome back, my newbie hackers! Recently, I "upgraded" to Kali as my hacking platform, despite my preference for BackTrack. I did this reluctantly, primarily because new readers here could no longer download BackTrack from their site. I want to point out here that we all must keep in mind that with any software—or for that matter, any product—that is newer is not necessarily better.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Scan the Internet for Heartbleed Vulnerabilities
Welcome back, my budding hackers! Recently, I showed you how you could exploit the widely disseminated OpenSSL vulnerability that has to become known as "Heartbleed". Although the world has known about this vulnerability for over a month now, it will likely take many more months—or even years—for everyone to close this vulnerability.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Hack Windows 7 to See Whether Your Girlfriend Is Cheating or Not
Welcome back, my hacker apprentices! Several of you have written asking me how you can check on whether your boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse is cheating on you, so I dedicate this tutorial to all of you with doubts about the fidelity of your spouse, girlfriend, or boyfriend.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Create a Nearly Undetectable Backdoor with Cryptcat
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! Awhile back, I demonstrated one of my favorite little tools, netcat, which enables us to create a connection between any two machines and transfer files or spawn a command shell for "owning" the system. Despite the beauty and elegance of this little tool, it has one major drawback—the transfers between the computers can be detected by security devices such as firewalls and an intrusion detection system (IDS).
Hack Like a Pro: How to Install BackTrack 5 (With Metasploit) as a Dual Boot Hacking System
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! Many of you have written me that you're having difficulty installing and running Metasploit on a variety of platforms. No matter if you're using Mac, Linux, or Windows, I strongly recommend you install BackTrack as your secondary OS, a virtaulization system, or on an external drive. This particular Linux distribution has many hacking and security tools integrated—including Metasploit.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Remotely Record & Listen to the Microphone on Anyone's Computer
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! So many of you responded positively to my post about using the keylogger, as well as my post regarding turning on the webcam, that I decided that you might enjoy another similar hack. In this article, we will enable the audio recording capability on the remote system of your roommate.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Remotely Install a Keylogger onto Your Girlfriend's Computer
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Several of you have you have emailed me asking whether it's possible to install a keylogger on a victim’s computer using Metasploit. The answer is a resounding "YES"!
Hack Like a Pro: How to Take Control of Windows Server 2003 Remotely by Launching a Reverse Shell
When I left off on our last hack, we had hacked into the ubiquitous Windows Server 2003 server by adding ourselves as a user to that system so that we can return undetected at any time. The problem with this approach is that a sysadmin who is on their toes will note that a new user has been added and will begin to take preventative action.
Hack Like a Pro: Hacking Samba on Ubuntu and Installing the Meterpreter
Hey, hackers! Now that you've hacked/owned your first "box" in my last article, let's look a little closer at another great feature of Metasploit, the Meterpreter, and then let’s move on to hacking a Linux system and using the Meterpreter to control and own it.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Use Hacking Team's Adobe Flash Exploit
Welcome back, my novice hackers! As most of you know by now, a notorious commercial, legal hacking group named "Hacking Team" was recently hacked. As part of the hack, thousands of emails and other material on their servers was divulged. Among the material released were three zero-day exploits. In this tutorial, we will walk through the steps to load one of them, which has become known as the CVE-2015-5119 exploit.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Anonymously Torrent Files with Tribler
Welcome back, my nascent hackers!
Hack Like a Pro: An Introduction to Regular Expressions, Part 2
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! A short while ago, I introduced you to regular expressions. Regular expressions are a language that is particularly useful for finding complex text patterns in streams of data.
Hack Like a Pro: Hacking Windows XP Through Windows 8 Using Adobe Flash Player
Welcome back, my novice hackers! New hackers often ask me the same question: "What is the easiest platform to hack?" My response is always the same—it is not a platform, but rather a particular piece of software that is easiest to hack, which is on nearly every client-side system. That software is Adobe Flash Player.
Hack Like a Pro: The Basics of XORing
Welcome back, my novice hackers! In a recent tutorial, I showed you how to use shikata_ga_nai to change the signature of a payload to evade detection by security devices (firewalls, IDS, etc.) and AV software.
Hack Like a Pro: The Basics of the Hexadecimal System
Welcome back, my novice hackers! It has become clear from some of your questions that quite a few of you are unfamiliar with the hexadecimal system, or simply, hex. The hexadecimal system is used throughout computing and if you have never studied this Base16 numering system, it may appear relatively opaque.
Hack Like a Pro: Creating a Virtually Undetectable Covert Channel with RECUB
Welcome back, my budding hackers! We've spent a lot of time learning to compromise Windows systems, and we've successfully compromised them with Metasploit, cracked their passwords, and hacked their Wi-Fi. However, very little time was spent developing ways to extract the information from the system once inside.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Exploit Adobe Flash with a Corrupted Movie File to Hack Windows 7
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! In my continuing effort to demonstrate to you how to hack the ubiquitous Windows 7, we will going after that notoriously vulnerable Adobe Flash that is on nearly every client Windows system (you are not likely to find it on servers).
Hack Like a Pro: An Introduction to Regular Expressions (Regex)
Welcome back, my novice hackers! This next subject might seem a bit obscure, but I promise you, this lesson will benefit you significantly either as a hacker or system admin. This tutorial will cover what is usually referred to as a regular expression, or regex for short.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Haunt Your Boss's Computer & Drive Him Insane
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! In today's hack, we're going to have a bit of Halloween fun. Have you ever had a boss who made you miserable with his micro-management and nagging? Maybe you thought he unfairly fired your friend/colleague? Well, now here's your chance to get a bit of revenge and keep him or her off your back!
Hack Like a Pro: How to Use Metasploit's Psexec to Hack Without Leaving Evidence
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! It's been awhile since we did a Metasploit tutorial, and several of you have pleaded with me for more. I couldn't be happier to oblige, as it's my favorite tool. For the next several weeks, I'll intersperse some new guides that'll help expand your Metasploit skills and keep you abreast of new developments in Metasploit, so look for them in the near future.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Create Your Own PRISM-Like Spy Tool
Welcome back, my hacker apprentices! In recent weeks, the revelation that the NSA has been spying on all of us has many people up in arms. I guess I take it all in stride as I just assume that the NSA is spying on all of us—all of the time. Don't get me wrong, I don't condone it, but I know the NSA.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Find the Latest Exploits and Vulnerabilities—Directly from Microsoft
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! Several of you have written me asking about where they can find the latest hacks, exploits, and vulnerabilities. In response, I offer you this first in a series of tutorials on finding hacks, exploits, and vulnerabilities. First up: Microsoft Security Bulletins.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Remotely Grab Encrypted Passwords from a Compromised Computer
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! There's an evil dictator hellbent on destroying the world, and in one of our last hacks, we successfully compromised his computer and saved the world from nuclear annihilation. Then, we covered our tracks so no one would know what we did, and developed a hack to capture screenshots of his computer periodically so we could track of what he was up to next.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Remotely Grab a Screenshot of Someone's Compromised Computer
Welcome back, my newbie hackers! We've already saved the world from nuclear annihilation and covered our tracks afterwards, but the world is still threatened by a malicious, megalomaniacal dictator with missiles and nuclear weapons.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Cover Your Tracks So You Aren't Detected
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Congratulations on your successful hack that saved the world from nuclear annihilation from our little, bellicose, Twinkie-eating dictator. The rest of world may not know what you did, but I do. Good job! Now that we hacked into the malevolent dictator's computer and temporarily disabled his nuclear launch capability, we have to think about covering our tracks so that he and his minions can't track our good works back to us.
Hack Like a Pro: How to Save the World from Nuclear Annihilation
Welcome back, my newbie hackers! Hackers often are associated with clandestine and illegal activity, but that is not necessarily always the case. Hackers are increasingly being used and employed for law enforcement, national security, and other legitimate purposes. In this installment, we will look at how a single hacker could save the world from nuclear annihilation.
Hack Like a Pro: Remotely Add a New User Account to a Windows Server 2003 Box
Welcome back, hacker novitiates! In the next few hacks, we will be breaking into Windows servers. In this installment, we will learn to add ourselves as a user to a Windows 2003 server. Of course, when we have added ourselves as a user, we can come back any time and simply log into our account without having to hack into the system and risk detection.
How to Hack Like a Pro: Hacking Windows Vista by Exploiting SMB2 Vulnerabilities
Hi, gang! Time for another hack using Metasploit. We have exploited Windows XP (a very insecure operating system) and we have exploited Ubuntu and installed Meterpreter on a Linux system exploiting the Samba service. Several of you have asked for a hack on more modern Windows systems, so here goes.